Instagram Tops 400M Users, Leaves Twitter in the Dust

Instagram has just hit another user milestone.

According to the company, it now has 400 million users. It hit 300 million back in December of 2014, so the photo-oriented social network took less than a year to snag the next 100 million users.

“Our community has evolved to be even more global, with more than 75 percent living outside of the US. To all the new Instagrammers: welcome! Among the last 100 million to join, more than half live in Europe and Asia. The countries that added the most Instagrammers include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia,” says Instagram.

“When Instagram launched nearly five years ago, 400 million seemed like a distant dream. Now, we continue to strive to improve Instagram — helping you experience the world through images and connect with others through shared passions.”

We are thrilled to announce that the Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong and is even more global, with 75 percent of our community living outside the US. To all the new Instagrammers: welcome! Among the last 100 million to join, more than half live in Europe and Asia. The countries that added the most Instagrammers include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia. Instagrammers continue to capture incredible photos and videos from all corners of the earth (and even the solar system). We’ve seen the first surface image of Pluto and the Champions League celebrations, as well as striking locales like the white pools of Turkey and a Namibian desert ghost town. These are just a few of the more than 80 million photos per day shared on Instagram. Also, the most followed accounts that joined in the last 100 million include David Beckham from the UK (@davidbeckham), Caitlyn Jenner (@caitlynjenner) from the US, Indonesia's Raffi and Nagita (@raffinagita1717), German soccer player Toni Kroos (@toni.kr8s) and South Korea's T.O.P (@choi_seung_hyun_tttop). When Instagram launched nearly five years ago, 400 million seemed like a dream. Now, we continue to strive to improve Instagram — helping you experience the world through images and connect with others through shared passions.

A photo posted by Instagram (@instagram) on Sep 22, 2015 at 2:03pm PDT

“The Instagram community now has 400 million people active monthly! Congrats to Kevin, Mike and the entire Instagram community on reaching another big milestone. Kevin and I celebrated the moment by going for a walk on our roof to talk about the future of Instagram. I’m excited for the journey ahead,” said Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.

Where does 400 million monthly active users put Instagram in the rankings? Well, it’s now blazed past Twitter, which only boasts about 316 million users (but that’s not the whole story, according to Twitter).

Other Facebook property WhatsApp just hit 900 million users – though the metrics on messaging users are somewhat open for interpretation. Facebook, of course, still leads the pack with a whopping 1.49 billion MAUs.

Instagram isn’t just growing its user base – its user base is spending significantly more time on Instagram. A recent Pew study found that 59% of users use the service every day – up from 49% last year.

Of course, the next frontier for Instagram is true monetization. The company has been careful as to not overwhelm the userbase with ads – but more are coming, as it’s been slowly opening advertising up to more and more. And most are pretty pleased with the performance so far.

Image via Mark Zuckerberg